This does make him sound like a saint, but is number of lives saved really a good metric? I mean, what's the quality of life like for these three million people, what's their life expectancy?
I know this makes me sound like a horrible person but I think keeping extremely poor people barely alive looks good as a statistic and there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.
It's difficult to have much empathy for people whose lives are so far removed from our own. For most of us, cancer is the boogeyman: most of the people here have had at least one friend or relative affected by it. What would you say to someone that suggested that saving the lives of cancer victims wasn't a worthy cause?
> ...there's more worthy causes to spend our efforts on in those areas where malaria is prevalent.
You are welcome to spend your efforts wherever you like. Gates has decided to spend his efforts on malaria. There is no room for an "our" there, unless you are a significant part of the Gates Foundation. I'm grateful that the mob doesn't get to decide how Gates spends his resources.
Malaria doesn't just kill. It maims. It scars families and communities. It impairs people's ability to earn. Childhood sickness inhibits the development all sorts of robustness later in life from physical strength to intellectual development. It makes certain areas underserved by public services and for profit services. It closes the doors to industries like tourism. etc. etc.
These measures aren't just extending life at the expense of quality. That's more of an advanced medicine concern.
You can't really be improving living conditions of people who are dead can you. So it's a first step.
After all, maybe someone out there in the world thinks that 1 person / km2 ought to be enough. Who's to say that you wouldn't be in his "TO TERMINATE" list?
And these are humans you're talking about, not deer.